Clattering Hoofs Read online

  “You mean that this man is Bob Webb’s son?”

  “That’s what I mean.” She gave up abruptly the playful approach she had adopted. She found herself too distressed for foolery. “He says he is going to get work on some ranch near here. I know he is back looking for more trouble. You must make him get out of this part of the country as quick as he can.”

  “What makes you think he is Webb?”

  “I watched him last night while you were telling about how Jug Packard got the Johnny B. He sat back where you could not notice his face. But I saw it—so hard and bitter and savage.”

  Ranger marshaled stray impressions of his own. “You may be right. Come to think of it, he looks some like Bob Webb did. Or would, without that beard. The same bony structure of face. If he is young Webb, he ought not to be in this neck of the woods. Why would he come back?”

  “I don’t know. But he didn’t come to shake hands with Jug Packard. There’s another thing. Do you know whether he might have been turned loose on parole? If not——”

  “There was a prison break at Yuma a few months ago,” Ranger said. “I read only the headlines in the paper. Three or four men escaped. Webb might have been one of them.” He stroked his short beard reflectively. “I think we’ll have to call Sloan in for a show-down.”

  “What if he admits he is Webb?”

  “Nothing to do but urge him to leave Arizona.”

  “If he has made up his mind to stay he won’t go.”

  “Now that he is smoked out he’ll probably go.”

  Sandra glanced through the window, said quickly, “Here he is.”

  Sloan stood in the doorway and looked from one to the other. “Excuse me,” he said to Ranger. “I didn’t know you were busy.”

  “Come in,” his host invited. “We have something to talk over with you.”

  Again the guest’s glance slid from the cattleman to his daughter. “About how to get rid of a guest who outstays his welcome, I reckon,” he said. “I’ll relieve yore minds. I’m traveling this afternoon. And since we’re together I’ll tell you right now how grateful I am for all the kindness you have shown me.”

  Ranger flushed with embarrassment. He did not find it easy to broach the subject in his mind.

  “We’re in your debt more than we can ever repay, Mr. Sloan,” he began. “You’re welcome to stay here till Christmas if you like. But, the fact is, the way things are with you, if we’ve guessed right——”

  The ranchman bogged down. He could not bluntly tell this man they thought he was a convict and a murderer.

  “Just how are things with me?” Sloan asked, his voice murmurously ironic.

  “We are wondering if you aren’t Bob Webb’s son,” Ranger gulped out.

  Sloan smiled, after an instant’s pause. “Miss Ranger has quite an imagination, hasn’t she?”

  Color crept into the cheeks of the girl. “You’re right to blame me,” she admitted. “My father would never have thought of it.”

  “She mentioned it to me because she was afraid you are stacking up trouble for yourself,” Ranger corrected.

  “For argument’s sake, let us say I am Bob Webb’s son.” The steely eyes of the young man held fast to those of the girl. “And an escaped convict. What do you propose to do about it?”

  “We think this is the most dangerous spot in the world for you,” she answered, her words low and husky. “Whatever purpose has brought you here can bring only trouble, unless you give it up. They’ll discover who you are, just as we have done. You must go far away from here at once.”

  “My brother has a cattle ranch on the White River in Colorado. It’s a fine country, but thinly settled. He would find a job for you if we asked it.” Ranger finished with direct advice. “I would go tonight. Any delay might be disastrous.”

  “I’ll go part way at least tonight,” Sloan promised with a sardonic grin. “Whatever happens, you’ll have done yore full duty by me—and some more. I’ll never forget yore kindness to me.”

  “You don’t mean to leave Arizona at all,” Sandra charged. “You mean to stay and—and——”

  There was the beginning of panic in her eyes. She did not know the conclusion of her sentence, only that it would be something dreadful.

  “I’ll leave as soon as I’ve finished my business.”

  “What business?” she demanded.

  “Personal and private.” His cynical smile denied her any knowledge of it or any part in it.

  The repulse was a slap in the face. But she cared nothing for that. Her mind was too intent on saving him.

  “Stay around here and you’ll leave with handcuffs on your wrists!” she cried.

  “Sandra!” he father warned sternly.

  The young man disregarded Ranger and spoke to the girl. In his eyes she saw again the reckless defiance of consequences. “I don’t think so. One place I’m not going to is Yuma.”

  From a white miserable face she stared at him. He meant that he would be killed rather than go back to prison. All his thinking was warped by the horrible experience he had endured. When he first went to the penitentiary he must have been just a boy. She had read stories written by released prisoners who had been shut up by society like wild beasts. It had twisted and embittered their lives. That was how it was with Cape Sloan. Existence had narrowed down with him to a determination to get revenge. And there was no way to show him that he was making a fatal mistake, that today might mark the beginning of a new life if he could escape the mental miasma in which he moved.

  When he rode away next morning Sandra watched him from the window of her bedroom. She had already said a smiling good-bye to him at breakfast, but there was no smile in her eyes or on her lips now. She was convinced that he was going to his death—perhaps not today or this week, but soon—and she believed he knew it. Yet he rode flatbacked and lightly, a sardonic recklessness in the gray-blue eyes set so challengingly in the coffee-brown face. It was dreadful to fear that all the virile strength of him might in a moment be stricken from that superb body.

  This morning Cape Sloan was not thinking about anything so grim as death. The warm sun was shining. A gentle breeze from the Huachucas stirred the mistletoe in the live oaks. It was the kind of day to make a man glad he was alive. Sloan’s thoughts were of the girl he was leaving behind him, though he did not let these deflect him from giving wary attention to the country through which he was traveling. He had been for months a man on the dodge. More than once he had shaved capture by a hair’s breadth. Since the hour of his prison break there had been scarcely a day when he had not walked with danger at his side. But meeting Sandra had set the sap of hope stirring in him again. He would beat it down savagely later, but for the time he let its sweet madness flow through him.

  There were ranches in the valley, but he circled them carefully, to meet as few people as he could. The morning was old when he struck the San Pedro river and followed it to the little village of Charleston drowsing in the sun. The river swept half way round the town, a row of fine Cottonwood trees on the bank.

  Cape loosened the revolver in its holster, to make sure of free action in case he had to draw. The chances were he would not be molested, but a man who rode as wild a trail as he did could not take any chances.

  11. Stan Fraser Buys Chips

  IT WAS HIGH NOON WHEN CAPE SLOAN RODE INTO THE little town of Charleston and tied up at the hitch rack in front of the Rawhide Corral. He strolled through the big gate and stopped beside a small man in jeans who was greasing a wagon.

  “Mr. Stan Fraser?” asked Sloan.

  “Yes, sir,” the owner of the name answered crisply.

  He had a lean sun-tanned face much wrinkled around the eyes, which were steel-blue and looked at his questioner very steadily. Fraser was nearer fifty than forty, but the years had not tamed a certain youthful jauntiness in him. His pinched-in Stetson was tilted to one side and the bandanna around his leathery throat was as colorful as an Arizona sunset.

  The m
uscles of Sloan’s face stiffened. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “You cussed old cow thief, I might have known I’d find you in this rustler’s town where honest men are as scarce as hens’ teeth. I’m sure surprised the law hasn’t caught up with you yet in spite of all the deviltry you’ve done.”

  Fraser’s eyes grew frosty. “A man who talks like you are doing has come to pick a fight. Before you start smokin’ mebbe you’ll tell me what the trouble is about. After that I’ll accommodate you if you’ll give me time to get a gun.”

  The features of the younger man relaxed to a smile. “Not fighting talk if I grin when I say it,” he denied. “Don’t you know who I am, you old one-gallus brush-popper?”

  Astonishment rubbed the anger from the face of Fraser. Recognition came slowly, after a long half-minute of eye searching. “By criminy, you’re young Bob Webb,” he cried. His gaze swept over the corral fence, and up and down the street. “What in heck you doing here, boy? You’d ought to be holed up in Mexico.”

  “Thought I’d drop in and shake hands with an old friend. But you don’t need to shout about it. There might be someone here with the idea that I ought to be holed up in Yuma and the two hundred dollars reward money jingling in his pocket.”

  The owner of the corral lowered his voice. “You’re dead right about that. This place is infested by lowdown scalawags who would sell their brothers for a dollar Mex. They claim that in Curly Bill’s time there was some honor among thieves. If a fellow was a crook he was safe here or at Galeyville or anywhere in this corner of Cochise County, safe from the law anyhow. But not now. Plenty of rustlers and bad men drop in here to get corned up. They are particular though to keep a saddled bronc in the alley to fork for a quick getaway.”

  “Since I rate as a crook I’d better do that too,” Sloan said.

  Fraser flushed. “Quit talkin’ foolishness, boy. You’re the son of my old boss, who was the whitest, straightest man who ever threw a saddle on a horse. You’ve had bad luck. I know thirty fellows walking the streets today who have killed for one reason or another. None of ’em ever served a day for it. You were just a kid, and they socked you twenty years. The scoundrels railroaded you. Everybody knows you got a raw deal.”

  “And do nothing about it,” Sloan added cynically.

  “What can we do, boy? We got up a petition to the governor for a pardon. Jug Packard blocked it. He’s a political power in the territory now. If I was you, I’d lie low with me till night and then ride hell-for-leather till you had crossed the line into mañana-land.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” the young man advised carelessly. “Nobody is going to drag me back to Yuma, not while I’m alive. I came to have a talk with you, Stan. After that I’ll vamoose.”

  Stan Fraser looked at the hard bony bearded face, lips close shut, eyes cold and steely, at the smoothly-muscled shoulders and the poised confidence of the man’s carriage, and he realized that it would be hard to recognize in him the loose-jointed gangling boy who had been convicted of killing Giles Lemmon more than seven years ago.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re just like yore father. No use telling him anything. He’d go his own way. When I said Jug Packard was a cold-blooded traitor without an ounce of decency or gratitude in him, Bob wouldn’t listen to me. He got hot under the collar.” The boss of the wagon yard hesitated a moment before blurting out what was in his mind. “I can’t prove it, but it’s my opinion yore father was killed by foul play. When we brought his body out of the drift I saw Hans Uhlmann and Jug whispering together. Hans was the only fellow except Bob down on that level at the time of the explosion.”

  “You think Uhlmann was paid by Packard to get rid of my father?”

  “I’ve told you all I know,” Fraser replied. “You do the thinking.”

  Sloan nodded. “I know that talk like that is dangerous. As for its going any further, you can be sure nobody else will ever know you said it.” Recalling subsequent events the eyes of the convict grew bitter and the muscles of his jaw stood out like ropes. “I don’t suppose you ever heard that after my father’s death Packard proposed to divorce his wife and marry my mother. She was terribly angry and put him in his place. Then he decided to take the Johnny B lock, stock, and barrel. That way he got my share too.”

  “And there’s not a thing you could do about it.”

  “Not then.”

  The older man slanted a sharp look at Sloan. “Or now. Don’t you start getting any crazy ideas in your head, boy. You tried it once and it ruined yore life.”

  “Yes,” the escaped prisoner agreed. “I didn’t know enough then to fight a man like Packard. I blundered in like a fool and was framed. The story I told at my trial was true. Both Packard and Uhlmann gave false testimony. When the firing began I was near the middle of the room, with Uhlmann on one side of me and Lemmon on the other. I ducked under the desk, and by chance Uhlmann’s bullet caught Lemmon in the throat. Packard made Uhlmann stop shooting. He figured it would look better not to kill me, but to send me to the penitentiary.”

  “I knew it was some kind of frame-up, but I thought they deviled you into killing Lemmon.” The mind of Fraser picked up something else the young man had said. “You didn’t know enough then, and now they have the cards stacked against you. No use trying to fight Packard. Even if the law wasn’t waiting to drag you to Yuma you couldn’t do a thing. He’s had time to get everything fixed. The way it is now you haven’t a dead man’s chance. First move you make, they throw you back into a cell. Be reasonable, son. You’re young yet. Get out of this country and make a new start. Forget Packard. One of these days he’ll get his.”

  Sloan ignored that. “Uhlmann didn’t have a nickel when he was working at the Johnny B. They say he has a pretty good ranch now. How did he get it?”

  “I’ve got quite a bump of curiosity myself, and I once looked into that. He claimed an uncle died and left him fifteen thousand dollars. That’s not true. Jug set him up in business, took a mortgage on the place, and a year or so later released it. I’ll bet Rhino never paid a dime of it. He knew too much, and Jug had to square him.”

  “Of course that was the way of it,” Cape Sloan assented. “They’ll stand together. I couldn’t get anything on them that way.”

  “Nor any other way.”

  “A fellow named Newman used to do the bookkeeping for the mine. Is he still there, do you know?”

  “No. He quit long ago. Works in the Southern Pacific railroad offices at Tucson.” Fraser added further information. “Funny thing about that. I met him soon after he had quit Packard and asked him why he had left the Johnny B. He gave me a quick look and shut up talking right then. Looked to me as if he was scared to say anything.”

  “Think I’ll drift over to Tucson,” Sloan mentioned.

  Fraser slapped down on the tire of the nearest wheel the dabbler with which he had been scraping grease on the axle. “I can see you are lookin’ for trouble, Bob,” he yelped excitedly. “Haven’t you got a lick of sense? Jug Packard is in the saddle. He’ll rub you outa his way soon as he finds out you’re around. If you don’t pull yore freight he’ll pull you in a wooden box or have you slapped back in jail. Jug is the cock-a-doodle-do around here.”

  A fiery wave seemed to pass through the younger man. He might make wreckage of his life, if there was any of it left that had not already been shattered, but he would stand up and fight to a finish.

  “You think this man murdered my father. So do I. He robbed my mother and broke her heart when his lies put me in the penitentiary. With me locked up, he left my little sister alone in the world. What kind of a weak-kneed quitter do you think I am?”

  His friend gave up trying to dissuade this bitter reckless man. Bob Webb’s son would walk unafraid into desperate peril if need be, as his father had more than once done before him. He was as tough as ironwood and as unrelenting as a wolf. It flashed across the mind of Fraser that he would not like to be in the shoes of Jug Packard as long as this enemy wa
s alive.

  “All right,” the little man said quietly. “I’ll side you. The best friend I ever had was yore father.”

  The convict shook his head. “No, Stan. I’m playing a lone hand. They’ll probably get me. I’ll not drag you down too.”

  Fraser flared up angrily. “Hell! Do you think you’re the only darn fool in the world? I’ve got no wife or kids. You can’t make up my mind for me. I’ll ride the river with you, fellow.”

  “Whether I want you to or not?” Sloan asked.

  “Y’betcha! This is a free country. You can’t stop me from going where you do any more than I can prevent you from doing what you’ve a mind to do.”

  “But this is my job, Stan,” the younger man explained. “It’s not yours. I have a right to risk my own life. The way I’m fixed it’s not worth anything anyhow. But I can’t lead you into trouble.”

  “Who’s leading me?” The old-timer bristled up to Sloan. “Not a young squirt like you. I’m trailin’ along to dry-nurse you.”

  Cape Sloan knew that his friend was game as a bulldog. He had been brought up in the outdoor school of the frontier which kept in session twelve months of every year. It was a rough and tumble school where there was no law to protect a man except the Colt strapped to his side. Stan was a small wiry bundle of energy. There was an old saying in the West that all men are the same size behind a six-gun. Cape could guess by the quick excitement in the eyes of the corral keeper that he was eager to escape from his present humdrum existence and turn back the clock to face the perils of a renewed youth.

  “There may be trouble,” Sloan reminded him.

  “Sure there’ll be trouble. Ain’t that what I keep tellin’ you?”

  “My idea is to move lawfully, getting evidence against Packard that will stand up in court.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “But it won’t be with Packard. If it looks like I’m getting anywhere, it’s a cinch that guns will start to smoke.”

  Fraser opened his eyes with mock astonishment. “You don’t think that good old mealy-mouthed Jug would start anything like that?” he demurred with obvious sarcasm.